This morning, our group had a very different experience for this week - took a brief trip to a legendary commercial street market in downtown Cape Town. At this market, we had our first shopping outing and in the processed learned on the fly about haggling/negotiating. The first thing I noticed was that there were no price tags. Many people in our group employed various strategies to attain a “better price,” and in other words, we made "friends" with the vendors or capitalized on the desperation of the vendors. All in all, we all came out feeling fulfilled with our newly purchased paintings and clothes- all gifts for our loved ones back home:-)
After that foray into consumerism and stimulating the South African economy, we trekked to the MOCAA Zeist Museum of Art. The building was creatively carved out of old grain silos. Each floor exhibited a different aspect of South African and African culture. We saw many different paintings, pictures, and sculptures with each display flowing into the next seamlessly. Some exhibits used multi-media presentations; an impactful medium was the use of drastic lighting to highlight the importance of a frame in a sequence of a story or punctuate the core idea of within a story.
To round out the day, we played basketball and soccer with the kids at iThuba. AB, Mariana, Robert, Miles, Harper, Olivia and Nia faced off against Reggie, Indipile, Siviwe, and a couple other players. It was a close match, but in the end, AB was able to lead the team to a 22-14 victory. Afterwards, we played some soccer, where we first led a B team against the iThuba kids; we were promptly trounced, with an ending score of 3-0. In the second match, the teams were a mix of both Poly and iThuba students; the match ended up going to penalty kicks. All in all, we all had a blast and had a ton of fun playing with and connecting to the iThuba kids.
For dinner today we had a special treat - some traditional South African food. The meals consisted of paap and a stew, with varying options from oxtail to chicken, kudo and even crocodile. Paap is similar to rice and is traditionally eaten using hands, so you could say we had to wash our hands copiously. It was probably the best dinner we have had so far into the trip. None of us had ever truly had an experience like that. Today we tasted, quite literally, the deeper levels of South Africa's cultures: a) an appreciation for sport; b) artistry at the highest levels; c) and a wonderful range of tasty African cuisines. Mmmmm.
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| Cape Town and Poly (Waterfront) |
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| At Museum of Contemporary Art of Africa |
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| Bowels of MOCAA (old grain silos converted to a museum) |
We found the rockers- Nia had fun
Jamming to the live African music
Dinner I
Dinner II
Harper drills a trey
Miles hits a 2 pointer
Coach Mariana
Siviwe to Mariana
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| Olivia Hadyn, and Tilda |
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| Stairwell at MOCAA |
